WEBVTT 00:00:00.400 --> 00:00:14.640 Well, today is uh Trinity Sunday, and uh this is going to mark really the beginning of what will be uh ordinary time where we're gonna be counting our days uh leading up to All Saints in the fall. 00:00:14.880 --> 00:00:32.640 But Trinity Sunday is really the day when the church takes like an intentional step back, like a backward step and a bird's eye view, and gets explicit about what is constantly always on our lips for the remainder of the year, namely Father, Son, and Spirit. 00:00:32.880 --> 00:00:40.079 But it's a way of taking a step back and being explicit about Father, Son, and Spirit. 00:00:40.320 --> 00:00:42.240 Explicit about Trinity. 00:00:43.039 --> 00:00:48.719 The doctrine of the Trinity is peculiar to the Christian faith, right? 00:00:48.799 --> 00:00:59.039 So no other philosophical or religious tradition has anything like Trinity to explain the divine, to talk about God. 00:00:59.679 --> 00:01:01.920 It's peculiar to Christians. 00:01:02.159 --> 00:01:05.439 And in the church, it's considered actually dogma. 00:01:06.000 --> 00:01:09.519 Uh we may hear often words like dogmatic. 00:01:09.599 --> 00:01:15.359 Um, typically we use that in a negative connotation, somebody's being dogmatic. 00:01:15.519 --> 00:01:19.439 But in the church, uh dogma is actually a beautiful thing. 00:01:19.680 --> 00:01:24.000 And it refers to the doctrines that are non-negotiable. 00:01:24.480 --> 00:01:27.439 Uh the doctrine of the Trinity is non-negotiable. 00:01:27.519 --> 00:01:46.000 And what that means is that when you begin taking apart the grammar of the Trinity, the doctrine of the Trinity, that as you're doing that, at the same time, you're actually stepping outside of what we mean by the language of Christian or orthodoxy. 00:01:46.079 --> 00:01:55.200 You're you're going into something else and you're uh steering from what is historically the Orthodox understanding of the Christian faith. 00:01:55.359 --> 00:02:03.359 Now, I sit make that comment not to say uh sort of a, you know, let's circle the wagons and how dare folks, you know, do this. 00:02:03.680 --> 00:02:25.840 That's not why I'm making this comment of dogma and the necessity of Trinity, but rather uh to show the absolute uh importance, the fundamental nature, the essential need of the doctrine of the Trinity for making our lives make any kind of sense at all. 00:02:26.319 --> 00:02:50.240 And what I mean by this, if we understand doctrines in the church, these ways of talking, this is often how I think about that that doctrines have a certain grammar and a certain syntax, a certain formula, a way of, you know, justified by faith through grace, or uh the doctrine as we speak of the person of Christ, of two natures in the hypostatic union of one person. 00:02:50.400 --> 00:02:54.879 It gives us this language that we can talk about, aspects of our faith. 00:02:55.120 --> 00:03:15.360 But doctrine, we might think of it as a pillar or a column, like this vertical, and the horizontal beam on top of these uh vertical columns that we can say doctrine or dogma are, that the beam is the story of Scripture. 00:03:15.680 --> 00:03:21.520 This is the story of the Bible, the story of Jesus, the narrative, the drama as it's unfolding. 00:03:22.000 --> 00:03:38.000 And doctrines are those uh systems of belief that hold up the story, that the doctrine of Christology, of the doctrine of humanity, the doctrine of the Trinity. 00:03:38.159 --> 00:03:48.159 That is, that if you don't have these pillars or these doctrines, that the story actually doesn't make any sense or it falls apart. 00:03:48.479 --> 00:04:17.839 So what essentially happens with Jesus, the advent and the revelation of God in Jesus, that Jesus, the the means by which the full revelation of God was revealed, that the advent, the death and resurrection of Christ actually occasioned a moment with God's people that said, huh, our language about God is outmoded, outdated. 00:04:18.240 --> 00:04:20.079 It doesn't actually work. 00:04:20.560 --> 00:04:23.839 It's not going uh the distance here. 00:04:24.160 --> 00:04:42.720 They recognize that if we are to continue with the claims that we're making about God as creator, about God as redeemer in Christ, about the humanity of Christ, about the indwelling of the Spirit, that we actually need a way of articulating that. 00:04:42.879 --> 00:04:49.839 Now, of course, the word Trinity is not in the Bible, but the reality of Trinity, that is Father, Son, and Spirit, is in the Bible. 00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:56.720 The Trinity is just the word that the church uses to give description to that which has been revealed. 00:04:57.120 --> 00:05:20.240 But what essentially happened was the church recognized that in order to make sense of our life, in order to make sense of the drama that's been unfolded in Christ, of Christ's redemption and the hope that we have, that Father, Son, and Spirit, that the doctrine of the Trinity was of absolute necessity. 00:05:20.879 --> 00:05:27.600 So it's born out of this deep desire to see this drama keep on going. 00:05:28.800 --> 00:05:45.920 And so the story of Jesus, the story of the Bible, and the intermingling, the interwovenness of our story with that story is all held together by the glue that we call Father, Son, and Spirit. 00:05:46.399 --> 00:05:48.480 Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. 00:05:48.959 --> 00:05:50.560 What does this mean? 00:05:50.879 --> 00:05:58.240 You'll notice in just a few moments when we recite what we do every Sunday, uh, the Nicene Creed. 00:05:58.720 --> 00:06:03.680 In the Nicene Creed, there's three stanzas, there's three sections. 00:06:03.920 --> 00:06:07.839 It's actually a creed about the Trinity. 00:06:08.399 --> 00:06:10.720 I believe God the Father, right? 00:06:11.199 --> 00:06:13.360 I believe Jesus Christ the Son. 00:06:13.519 --> 00:06:15.519 I believe in the Holy Spirit. 00:06:15.759 --> 00:06:19.120 Those are the main three sections, right, of the creed. 00:06:19.199 --> 00:06:20.800 It's a Trinitarian creed. 00:06:20.879 --> 00:06:23.759 It's a creed of making claims about God. 00:06:24.720 --> 00:06:52.480 And all the descriptions that fit, if you'll notice the next time you open up your prayer book, right, that the claims that we make about us, about the church, about our sanctity, our unity, our common life, about forgiveness, about our hope in the future, you'll notice that that is all bracketed under our claims about the Spirit. 00:06:53.120 --> 00:06:54.480 So, what does this mean? 00:06:54.639 --> 00:07:10.319 This is what we're seeing in the necessity of the uh this doctrine of the Trinity reflecting the living God who's revealed by Jesus to make any kind of sense of the story. 00:07:10.399 --> 00:07:13.439 And you can see a loose story in the creeds, right? 00:07:13.519 --> 00:07:21.439 From creation, redemption in Christ, and then you see the kingdom that we're hoping for and the resurrection. 00:07:22.160 --> 00:07:25.839 But what does this mean for us as Christians? 00:07:26.480 --> 00:07:37.680 This means that the reality of forgiveness, to doubt the durability of forgiveness, is to doubt the Trinity. 00:07:41.759 --> 00:07:56.319 To doubt your sanctity right now, the sanctity that belongs to the church, that belongs to the body of Christ, in the logic of the creeds is to doubt the Trinity. 00:07:57.759 --> 00:08:07.600 What you see is that the interwovenness of the claims that we make about God are interwoven with claims that we make about ourselves. 00:08:07.839 --> 00:08:12.720 And ultimately, good theology is making claims about God. 00:08:13.360 --> 00:08:19.839 But what we find as we're making these claims is that those claims make a claim on us. 00:08:20.560 --> 00:08:22.959 That this is the God who's been revealed. 00:08:23.199 --> 00:08:27.839 This is how I know mercy follows me everywhere. 00:08:28.160 --> 00:08:30.399 This is the God who's been revealed in Jesus. 00:08:30.560 --> 00:08:36.720 This is how I know that I'm blameless and righteous and sanctified. 00:08:37.679 --> 00:08:40.159 This is the God revealed in Christ. 00:08:40.320 --> 00:08:45.759 This is how I know that I have any kind of grounds for hope about the future. 00:08:46.159 --> 00:08:46.639 Why? 00:08:46.879 --> 00:08:50.480 Because it's this God that's been revealed. 00:08:51.519 --> 00:09:02.080 What we often do is we kind of disconnect or unhook these radical claims about God from ourselves. 00:09:02.320 --> 00:09:09.120 This is why I love the scripture that was uh uh we beautifully read in Genesis, right? 00:09:09.360 --> 00:09:12.799 Or let us make humanity in our image. 00:09:13.519 --> 00:09:20.159 That this already, this vision of Trinity at the very beginning, well, how do you know what a human being is? 00:09:20.320 --> 00:09:23.279 Well, you gotta look to God, right? 00:09:24.080 --> 00:09:29.519 This connection between Father, Son, and Spirit, and who we really are. 00:09:29.679 --> 00:09:36.480 We see it in our Matthew text that even with redemption, right, Jesus says, all power and authority has been given to me. 00:09:36.639 --> 00:09:41.440 Go baptize, make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 00:09:41.600 --> 00:09:53.279 It's like your creation is from, yes, Father, Son, Spirit, your redemption is from, yes, Father, Son, and Spirit, and our future, as we say in the creeds. 00:09:53.919 --> 00:09:56.559 It's Father, Son, Spirit. 00:09:58.000 --> 00:10:12.080 So, Trinity, to make claims about this God, to make claims about the redemption that Jesus has brought to us, is to make claims about Father, Son, and Spirit. 00:10:13.279 --> 00:10:41.360 And what this means, right, it's it's like the the church is wrestling like, wow, like this God who's revealed is the Father of Jesus, who is the creator of everything, transcendent beyond everything, and yet intimately involved in humanity, and the person of the Son is actually in union, perfect union with humanity. 00:10:41.519 --> 00:10:59.440 And then ascended this divine human Christ ascended and is seated in the heavenly places, ruling, and yet this king of the universe is yet also intimately present in our heart by the Spirit. 00:11:02.559 --> 00:11:04.480 This is wild. 00:11:05.360 --> 00:11:06.879 This is Trinity. 00:11:07.519 --> 00:11:09.759 This is Father, Son, and Spirit. 00:11:10.000 --> 00:11:16.159 I love, I remember, I can't remember the preacher who said it, but I thought, like, that's exactly right. 00:11:16.399 --> 00:11:25.679 Uh when Christ dies, right, in the temple veil that separates the holy place from the Holy of Holies is opened. 00:11:25.840 --> 00:11:31.360 Uh that, oh right, we can now go into the Holy of Holies, right? 00:11:31.440 --> 00:11:34.879 That this is this image, and of course, that's yeah, that's absolutely there. 00:11:34.960 --> 00:11:37.200 We see this, I think, in Hebrews. 00:11:37.360 --> 00:11:41.039 But this preacher, uh, he said, no, no, no, no. 00:11:41.440 --> 00:11:45.919 When that veil tore, it's like God is out on the run. 00:11:47.919 --> 00:11:50.720 Like this wild God is searching. 00:11:50.799 --> 00:11:54.240 Uh, I think it was Spurgeon that called him the hound of heaven. 00:11:54.559 --> 00:11:56.399 Like he will hunt you down. 00:11:57.039 --> 00:11:58.320 This is Trinity. 00:11:58.480 --> 00:12:00.240 This is the God who's been revealed. 00:12:00.399 --> 00:12:09.360 The creator, the redeemer, and the one who is not out there somewhere, but here that we call Holy Spirit. 00:12:10.240 --> 00:12:15.440 Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. 00:12:15.840 --> 00:12:22.080 As it was in the beginning, it is right now, and it will be forever and ever. 00:12:22.559 --> 00:12:23.200 Amen.